Do we expect too much from our young athletes?
“Yes,” is the quick response from Dr Jonathon Weakley of Brisbane’s Australian Catholic University.
And the careers of sporting stars such as Trai Fuller show that hyping athletes too early is not the only path to greatness.
Rookie Trai Fuller on the fly.Credit: Getty
The Dolphins fullback has arguably been his side’s best from three first-grade appearances.
But Fuller didn’t hit the big-time straight from school, the 27-year-old spending seven long seasons playing in the lower ranks.
Weakley has worked alongside sporting organisations as an expert in long-term athlete development – England Rugby Union and a host of Olympians among them – and has played a crucial role in facilitating dramatic changes worldwide for how talents are nurtured and not written off prematurely.
Academies across codes identify talent as young as 14.
Drawing on his experience working with ERU – helping set up “the largest successful rugby research group of all time” alongside Leeds University – Weakley says early identification of talent across sports should not mean hopefuls who do not develop as quickly as others are abandoned.
Both for their sakes, and the future of sport.
“Rugby union is not an early development sport, in the sense that the longer we can put off deselection, the more successful we become,” Weakley says.
“When I went to the United Kingdom and worked with England rugby … we helped change the selection policies, we pushed selection and deselection back as far as we possibly could and what we effectively had was a wider base.
“When we have a wider base, we have a higher peak. The longer we can keep players playing the game, the more players that we have, the more options we have, the greater the talent pool, the greater the opportunity to select players, the greater the competition in long-term performance.
“We will have ups and downs, life is never a linear trajectory.
“We also know that later-maturing individuals often grow to be bigger, and we also know later-maturing individuals have to create some form of coping strategy to play with bigger players.
If we deselect them early on, we lose a lot of those players. We need to ensure our talent pool is as broad as possible, is as deep as possible, and that will ensure our players at the top level have the highest peak.
Jonathon Weakley, Australian Catholic University
Fuller’s path to the NRL is similar to that followed by men he will likely meet on the field in the future.
Cody Walker, Nicho Hynes and Jamal Fogarty plied their trade in the Queensland Cup for years, much like Fuller did with Redcliffe, before going on to become pillars of their clubs.
But how many have fallen through the cracks?
Walker’s journey gives Fuller hope there is a chance for him to forge a successful NRL career and garner his first full-time contract.
The pair both debuted at 26, with the former now on the verge of playing his 200th game and with five State of Origin caps.
“To see what he’s done in the game at an older age, I’ve got to try to do the exact same thing,” Fuller says. “I think training every day and not having to go to work helps out. It’s been a massive help with the Dolphins.”
“I’ve just got to keep playing good footy and let that take care of itself. Whatever happens, happens, [but] I want to stay at Reddy.”
Young athletes have resources and support at their disposal that far supersede what came before them.
The growth of AFL academies has led to draftees straight out of high school being given an immediate chance to shine on the big stage, while the development of prestigious rugby league schools such as Keebra Park has yielded the same from the likes of Reece Walsh and Payne Haas.
The reality, however, is not all teenagers will develop in the same manner.
That does not mean they are a spent force and do not possess the skills to one day make an impact.
Reece Walsh is one example of the players who shine in their youth, however not all possess the same talent at that age.Credit: Getty
Queensland Reds coach Les Kiss has leaned into the strategy of allowing younger talent to fill the limited places available among the elites, managing the workloads of developing youngsters Harry McLaughlin-Phillips, Tom Lynagh and Mac Grealy.
It is why competitions such as the Queensland Cup – its future uncertain last year when plans for an NRL reserve grade competition were reported amid a fight for funding – are so crucial.
Weakley speaks of the need for alignment between the professional outlets and those who sit beneath them, allowing players who do not perform at one level the support and ability to progress at another.
An individualised approach needed to be taken with each athlete, he says, considering factors such as their biological growth, frame of mind and support in their life off the field.
“We cannot have cookie-cutter approaches to the welfare of players,” Weakley says.
“It’d be a real shame if we deselected those athletes because they didn’t play like superstars in their first opportunity.
“You might have a young player who’s 18 or 19 who has had a lot of time in their body, compared to a relatively late bloomer. That’s a really hard thing to contextualise and factor in as a confounding variable, and we need to be aware of that.”
